Lake natron turns animals to stone3/11/2023 Those that fall in and perish are exceptionally preserved by the salts that make the lake so unique, but the lake’s surface isn’t an aquatic equivalent of the Medusa’s gaze. And for thoseĪnimals that do become interred here, animals don’t immediately die and turn to stone upon touching the lake. Lake Natron is a hots pot for beautiful life. Anything else that comes into contact with Natron or its vapors for too long dies, due to the lake’s insane sodium levels that make it nearly as corrosive as ammonia.īecause of its alkalinity and temperatures that can spike up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the lake also dries out and calcifies the animals’ carcasses, eternally preserving them as desiccated flesh statues via the same process used by the Ancient Egyptians to create mummies. Placid Lake Natron is lethal to pretty much every life form except for a certain species of extremophile fish (the official fish of the X Games). In Lake Natron’s case, it’s skimming over the fact that the waters mummify hundreds of animals every year. “Lake That Turns Animals To Stone? Not Quite”.Cash Acme Plumbing Products | Thermostatic Regulating Pressure Valves. “The Lost World of Socotra Archipelago”.“This Alkaline African Lake Turns Animals Into Stone”. ![]() Subscribe to What-If on YouTube or follow the show on Facebook Watch. But if you’re craving something even more extreme, how about surviving a limnic eruption on your next swim? Think you could handle it? As for our flamingo friends, this just goes to show how the harshest environments can be a sanctuary for some animals. They quickly built stretchers and carried the injured to land in the nick of time.Įven though you could survive Lake Natron’s waters, I’d stick to a swimming pool if I were you. Incredibly, one of the passengers managed to struggle to shore and alerted some of the Masai tribespeople nearby. The pilot suffered a broken leg, and another passenger had a broken hip. A group of wildlife videographers plunged Lake Natron’s toxicity when their helicopter crashed. In 2007, another kind of bird flew straight into this chemical cocktail. Turns out, the lake’s toxic waters provide a safe haven from predators, making it perfect flamingo flocking grounds. Despite so many birds dying in Lake Natron, there is a particular species flourishing. Kind of like that one time in the office. He theorized, since the lake is so mirror-like and reflective, the birds must have flown right into it. He discovered several stone birds and other unlucky animals in the dry season when the water had receded. In 2013, wildlife photographer Nick Brandt was one of the first to document this phenomenon. Talk about killing two birds with one stone! Any birds that happen to take a dive and don’t make it out become calcified in a hardened, stonelike husk. The whole chemical composition is extremely alkaline, with pH levels of 10.5 close to matching ammonia (NH3). ![]() Releasing into the water, this mix of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate were key ingredients once used in Egyptian mummification, creating the perfect preservative in lake form. ![]() The volcano spews a rare kind of lava rich in sodium (Na) and potassium carbonate (K2CO3), called Natrocarbonatite, or Natron for short.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |